1956 Chevy 210 - Yesterday’s Child

When it comes to photographing a car for a feature, it’s always good to know the car’s really a driver. We asked Ric Panneton about the best spots to photograph his ’56 Chevy 210 and were relieved to hear that he had no qualms about driving it to wherever we needed to go. We arrived at Ric’s house to find that the car was still tuned for drag racing as it had been when it ran at Famoso a few weeks prior. Ten minutes with the fiberglass front clip off had the distributor dialed back to a more cruising-friendly timing setting, and we were caravanning through Covina, California, the car’s loping idle drawing fellow motorists to turn their heads. One motorcyclist on a street bike nodded his approval through an open helmet visor, and pedestrians stopped in their tracks to stare. A legit, street-driven gasser is interesting enough, but the history of this car and how it managed to cross paths with its original owner are truly what makes it worthy of attention.

1/11McPeak Painting and Pinstriping in Riverside, California, laid down the pinstripes, flames, and "Yesterday's Child" lettering.

In October 2004, Ric was searching eBay on his lunch break when he happened upon the auction for this ’56 Chevy and had to show it to his brother, Marc. For years the two had wanted to find or clone the B/Gasser ’56 Chevy their dad, Dick Panneton, and his two partners, Dick Jones and Chris Christensen, had raced from 1962 to 1967. Here’s the story, in Ric’s own words, of the car and how a HOT ROD archive photo helped reunite it with its original owner.

“The ’56 in the auction had many similarities to the Panneton, Jones & Christensen ’56, so we paid the reserve amount and had our brother-in-law drive to Celeste, Texas, to pick it up. We had asked the seller several questions that led us to believe we may have finally found the car, and if it wasn’t, it was already 75 percent the clone we wanted to build. A short time after we had the car home, we arranged a surprise unveiling with our dad. After inspecting it, he said, ‘I don’t think it’s our old car.’ When he and Jones first built theirs, they moved the rear springs inboard for added tire clearance, and this car still had them in the stock location. It also still had wing windows; our dad had removed theirs.

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"Thank God patina is in, because it has plenty of that." --Ric Pannenton

“The similarities they did share were that they both were 210 sedans with radiused wheelwells that followed the original wheelwell shape. They both had the ‘Chevrolet’ script removed from the quarter-panels, they both had straight front axles with single, suicide-mounted front springs, and they both had Corvair steering boxes mounted in front of the axle with the same near-equal-length drag links parallel with the axle to improve handling. They also shared the same one-piece Fiberglass Trends front end, the maximum-allowed, 10-percent Gas Class engine set back, and they both had chassis-exit headers instead of the more common fenderwell style. Marc and I decided to adopt Yesterday’s Child as the Panneton, Jones & Christensen car until otherwise proven absolutely wrong.”

3/11The current maroon paintjob was done by an unknown artist on top of the previous four colors. The front and rear windows are original, while the side windows are Cobalt Blue Plexiglas installed just like on the old PJ&C car.

When Ric and Marc purchased the car, it had a 350 with a lumpy cam, a Powerglide, and "a bent-up 12-bolt," so they spent the next few years building the car more in line with their father's. The PJ&C car ran a 400 small-block using a 327 block and a 3.625, 289 Studebaker crank stroked to 4.00 by C-T Stroker. This time around, they used a '74 400 block converted to a four-bolt with Summers Brothers steel main caps. The block was already at 4.165, so Dougan's Engine and Machine in Riverside, California, provided just a light hone and checked that the decks were still square. The crank is a used Callies forging with a stock 3.750 stroke. Rod and piston choice was easy, as Ric works in design and sales at CP Pistons. A set of 6.000-inch Carrillo H-beam rods are mounted to CP X-style forged flat-top pistons balanced by Johnson Machine Service in City of Industry, California. The heads are the original mule set of Edelbrock Victor Jr. castings and use 2.08/1.60 valves activated by a Mike Jones solid-roller cam with 255/260 duration and 0.625/0.600 lift via 1.6- and 1.5-ratio, steel Comp Cams roller rockers. The heads were originally ported in-house at Edelbrock, but Ric had Charlie Hemphill at Hemphill Racing in Raleigh, North Carolina, do one of his top-secret valve jobs, and Ric helped out as the two took turns perfecting the ports and chambers. The intake flows 305 cfm and the exhaust flows 235 cfm at 0.650 lift.

4/11Dual Quadrajets on a Weiand tunnel-ram feed the 410 Chevy small-block. Schoenfeld headers feature a modern coating, but Ric is tempted to paint them white.

The unusual induction setup is a Weiand tunnel-ram modified to hold two 750 Rochester Quadrajets that Ric has aptly named the "OctaJet." The manifold has coolant return lines plumbed into the back of the heads to equalize water temps front to back. A GM single-point distributor was converted with a PerTronix Ignitor II ignition and is fed juice through a Crane PS91 E-core coil, sending the spark through BorgWarner spiral-core wires and Champion RC12YC plugs. An Edelbrock aluminum water pump circulates coolant through a four-core early Mustang/Falcon radiator and into the heads at the siamesed center exhaust ports to aid cooling and gasket life. Finally, all the spent fuel is blown out through a set of coated Shoenfield headers with Hooker 4-into-2-into-1 collectors with 31/2-inch outlets. The headers were lengthened vertically to clear the rear radius rod mounts by Tim at Morse Muffler in Burbank, who also donated a used set of round Dynatech split-flow mufflers from his road-race car.

5/11Wheels are ET Team III five-spokes, 15x5-inch with 3-inch backspacing and Coker/BFGoodrich Silvertown 5.90x15s in front and 15x12-inch with 6-inch backspacing and M&H 17.5x29s out back.

Ric scored an old Doug Nash five-speed and modified it with a Liberty Gears slick-shift gearset and a Long Engineering inline shifter. An aluminum, 12-pound flywheel and Soft Lock clutch assembly from McCleod spin inside a Lakewood scattershield. The clutch is engaged by a McCleod self-adjusting hydraulic throwout bearing. Drive Shaft Specialists in Azusa, California, built a driveshaft 16 inches shorter than stock that uses a billet Mark Williams Chrysler yoke to connect the trans to a Strange Engineering Dana 60 that's 56 inches wide. The axle uses a lightened steel spool, billet steel carrier caps and yoke, a 4.30 ring-and-pinion, 35-spline axles, and 111/2-inch Ford drum brakes. Unfortunately, the '57 Pontiac rearend and chrome, square-tube ladder bars did not survive, nor did the homebrewed bell-crank shifter linkage and '40 Ford pedal assembly that once came through the floorboard. Someone in the car's past got into the trunk and got squirrely with the hot wrench, so Randy at Fortune Fabrication made some new wheeltubs and a trunk floor, while adding a few necessary updates to the rollcage to make it NHRA legal.

The Pannetons were happy with their strong-running and streetable gasser, but they were still curious about the car's origins.

"On Christmas Day 2009, Marc, Dad, and I were drooling over the Jan. '10 copy of HOT ROD Deluxe. On page 39 at the bottom left was a picture of a 150-trimmed '56 Chevy E/Gasser owned by Dennis Coker, racing at the inaugural HOT ROD Magazine Championships at Riverside Raceway. Dad said he remembered this guy and how hard he ran in D&E/Gas. It looked very much like our car and I thought, What if this is the car we have? After two years of rolling this around in my head, I came up with a Riverside address and phone number for a Dennis Coker. When I called, a woman answered and I asked if Dennis was in. She asked who was calling, and I said, 'You don't know me, but if your husband ever drag raced, I may have one of his old cars.' She said, 'Only one--a red '56 with an Isky 505 on the quarter-panel.'

"When Dennis got on the phone, I started asking some questions and learned that Dennis' best friend and future brother-n-law, Louis Newell, bought the maroon-and-white-two-tone 210 265 Power Pack sedan slightly used in 1956. In the fall of 1959, Dennis bought it and started hopping it up. After adding a dual four-barrel setup and Duntov cam, he started his drag racing career in D/Gas. He started winning right away at tracks like Lyons, San Gabriel, Pomona, Fontana, and even Inyokern, and still has the trophies to prove it.

"He was still driving the car back and forth to work, when one day someone made a left turn in front of him and banged up the front sheetmetal pretty bad. The car still has a small scar on the left-side cowl. He repaired the car and painted it Bahama Blue and kept racing. In 1962, he was tuning up at Pomona for the upcoming Winternationals and blew his last three-speed to smithereens. A friend of a friend told him he had a new T10 four-speed and shifter, so they took it to the guy's house and installed it. Dennis took all the marbles the next weekend in D/G and still has the four-foot trophy to prove it. He then took the car off the streets, radiused the rear wheelwells to accommodate bigger slicks, changed the side trim to 150 style, painted the car red, and had it professionally lettered by Dennis Jones. He also added weight and began running in E/Gas and took the trophy again at the '64 Winternationals.

7/11The '60s iteration of the car used master cylinders mounted under the car and a massive Moon pedal, but now Ric uses a Wilwood clutch/brake pedal assembly.

"Because of his growing family and commitment as a father, Dennis chose to sell the car in the summer of 1965. All he can remember about the buyer was that he was from Long Beach. We believe this person is probably the one who put the axle in the front and did the engine setback but have yet to find him. When the car was sold, it was the National E/Gas record holder at 12.48/110 mph, a record that stood for several years. Of all the trophies he has shared with us, the most special to me is the one he was awarded at the '64 HOT ROD Magazine Race at Riverside, the very same race where the photo that appeared in HOT ROD Deluxe was taken. I also learned that Dennis still had the sales contract between him and his friend, Louis, which contained the VIN. The next day, Carol called me and read from the contract the very same VIN that had been attached to the doorpost of our car the day it was assembled. They had not seen nor heard of their old racer since the day they sold it some 46 years earlier.

"Dennis and his wife, Carol, who still has her own Pomona Drags jacket, have become quick and dear friends. I am so thankful they are still around to share their old girl. My earliest, favorite memory of my dad and the Panneton Jones & Christensen '56 is sitting on his lap as a three-year-old boy, being towed up the return road of San Fernando Drag Strip with the fans in an arm-waving frenzy and the sun shining through those cool blue windows. Sadly, we lost Dad last October, and I would like to dedicate this story to him and my new Gasser hero, Dennis Coker."